In sports, helmets are designed primarily to protect the head from direct contact by other pieces of sports equipment while playing. American Football is receiving particular attention of late because of the latent trauma experience by players on a long-term basis in addition to the immediate trauma to the brain suffered by concussive impacts. Previous protective American Football sporting helmets are designed to protect the head from cranial fractures and sports related concussions (SRC) stemming from impact received by the player initiating the force or receiving the force by increasing the technology of the helmet itself.
The previous helmets designers aimed at reducing concussive force by crafting a soft helmet outer surface with harder inner shell, a hard exterior with softer interior cores, a facemask with bending technologies, or a facemask with energy/shock absorbing clips that assist in slowing impacts received from the front (head on, directly into the players facial region).
Some facemask systems have been designed to reduce the impact of straight on facemask to facemask collisions. However, as is understood by those who actually play the game, straight on facemask to facemask collisions are only a small percentage of the type of impact between players' helmets. Generally this design may be ineffective at reducing impact that is not straight on between opposing facemasks.
As can be seen, there is a need for a helmet that improves upon reducing the concussive impact to the head and brain experienced by athletes during sports.